Clouds

What do you see? :c3:

I stumbled upon this workflow a while back while learning how to do mini-worlds. I just leave off the last part, which is the polar conversion step at the end. Here's how it goes:

I take a landscape image that has a prominent feature on either the left or right edge, like this base shot which has a set of hills rising up toward the right edge. I do a pretty extreme pano crop, then add canvas on the right so that I can flip the image and place the mirror image into the right half. Now I have one very wide pano image. I go to image>image size and make the image square. Since I'm working on a tiff file at this point and have resolution to spare, I want to add pixels and not take them away, so I make the vertical pixels equal to the horizontal pixels (stretching the image vertically instead of squashing it horizontally). Now there is a square image that has this strange warping effect, and you can crop it to whatever aspect you like or makes sense for the image.

This is a four-image HDR converted in HDR Efex Pro. Then I used Topaz Adjust and Detail and did some color adjustments in CS5.

Kerry, A cool result well done, creative and inspiring. The sky looks like a giant insect ready to devour the reader. Good to meet you in person at the Adventurers Club .

I remember this one, Kerry. I like the sky although would have preferred a bit more contrast. Nicely done.

Very interesting image and application, Kerry.

Like the effect on the clouds. :c3:

Very cool Kerry..............this is like the Wizard of OZ, only in grander scale. There is a puppy face at the crest of the mountain.................like the colors.

This image is a little scary! Looks like it belongs in one of my son's computer games! Well done.

Thanks everyone! Anita, that is a nice compliment. :c3: Indranil, I just did this one last night, so I think you are remembering the blue one from a couple of years ago - HERE Good memory!

Steve, a pleasure to meet you too and thanks so much for the invitation!

This is great. I took a look at the last one you linked to and that is wonderful as well.

You're planting ideas in my brain for my upcoming Yellowstone trip!

Kerry, this is really cool. The clouds are kinda spooky looking!